Page 62 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
This is the way of the mountains, the way it has always been. This is the truth we learned as children, the truth that followedus into adulthood, through whispers that bound us. A Morgan woman can cast a wish. She can scratch at the door of the mountains and ask for the world, but if they agree to help, she must give something of equal importance in return. An eye for an eye. A secret for a secret.
A life for a life.
I hope the mountains extract payment from me when I’ve lived a full, rich life. I search for Matthieu’s cold hand, cradle it in my own, and lean my forehead into his, which is still blisteringly hot. For maybe the only time I’ll ever get to say it, I whisper to him, realizing that it’s true.I love you.
As dawn finds us, searching through the trees with golden, watery fingers, I regret nothing. I have fought my way back, across oceans, over vast distances, and I deserve to be here on this mountainside. Next to Matthieu, next to this man who has made me want to stay, who has walked every step with me through this winter.
I have finally found my way home.
I close my eyes, allowing my own soul to drift and wander, Matthieu’s hand tucked in mine.
Chapter 47
Cora
Too many tubes. Too much beeping, too much movement and light so bright it makes her eyes ache. She clings to his bedside, her eyes snapping back and forth, trying to understand all that’s happening, feeling like she’s drowning.
“Speak up!’ she says crossly when a young woman comes to dance around Howard’s bed as she idly chats, asking him questions, plumping his pillow, and staring intently at the machines around him. Cora pushes a pair of spectacles up the bridge of her nose, blinking owlishly and grimacing. “Speak up! What doctor? What did they say?”
She wants her home, her kitchen, the familiar comfort of her well-worn routine. Mostly she wants Carrie. She wants Carrie to be here with her, to translate the world around her until it all makes sense. She seeks Howard’s hand as she sits ramrod straight in the standard-issue hospital chair and winces when her fingertips brush the cannula at the back of his wrist, the rigid plastic taped down to fasten around his hand.
Howard is alive. That’s what she keeps telling herself. He’s alive, he’s still breathing, and this is all a nightmare that they can wake up from very soon. Until she found him in that field, his eyes turned to the wide bowl of sky, she hadn’t realized how much she loved him. How much she needed him. How her life had grown around his and, fused together, they had collectedmemories and age like lichen. How her life without him wouldn’t make any sense.
Really, she’s wasted a lifetime. Ever since that first date, the one Howard wrangled from her in exchange for that damn pig that kept escaping, she’s been smitten and hasn’t wanted anyone but him. She’s a fool, for not seeing that he’s the love of her life. He has been everything—her best friend, her partner, the person she snarks at, the person she sleeps next to every night. Everything about him—the slippers he wears, the newspaper he reads, the way he likes his eggs cooked for breakfast—is more important than she ever realized. And now... now...
“Is Carrie here yet? Did you call her?” she asks the woman with the kind eyes and light brown skin. She grips Howard’s hand a little tighter, gazing at him intently. She’s not ready to let him go.
Cora is left alone again, Howard asleep at her side. She lets his hand slip from hers and places it on the bed beside him. The green curtains are pulled around their cubicle, creating a kind of life raft, a space of muffled quiet in this vast sea of people. She feels as though this hospital is endless, and that they’re drifting through it with no shore in sight. Vaguely, she’s aware of her heart thumping too fast, of a buzzing sound like a bee trapped in her ears. She gets up, her head swaying, vision tunneling and turning dark before coming back to her. She needs to rest. To lie down.
Cora crawls onto the hospital bed next to Howard, carving a slight space next to him to drop her slender frame. He mutters in his sleep, and she’s sure he says,I love you. So she says it back, murmuring in his ear, drawing the blankets and sheets around her body too as she pats his arm. She sinks into his side, avoiding the tubes, and balances a featherlight hand on his chest. She watchesthe way it rises and falls, their world shrinking to this hospital bed, their shared warmth, this movement.
As Cora closes her eyes, she hears her. Her Carrie. She’s asking for something, pleading. Begging in a way that wrenches at her heart. Cora tries to reply, tries to fight through the cobweb of tiredness to find her. She realizes, with sudden, horrible clarity, why Carrie never answered her phone call, why Carrie hasn’t come to find them in the hospital.
“She’s in the mountains, she—she... Howard, Carrie’s gone there—”
She tries to get up, force her limbs to fight the fatigue. But her heart thumps once, twice, too loud, like a clenched fist against a door, and she gasps. She clutches at Howard, clinging to him in confusion as the hospital floats away.
She closes her eyes and suddenly she’s in the mountains. She’s there, standing next to Carrie, or at least she thinks she is, and Carrie’s body is wrapped around the man Cora was so sure wasn’t real. Cora kneels down beside her, shakes her arm, screaming her name. But Carrie only mutters, shrugging her off. Cora looks around at the darkness, listening to the silence, and notices the dribble of blood from Carrie’s hand. She suddenly realizes why she’s here. Why she’s on the mountain somehow, not on the hospital bed lying next to Howard.
“Carrie, you made a bargain,” she whispers, looking at her face. So young, so tired, so pale in the silver moonlight. “All right,” she says, her gaze sliding to the man at her grandniece’s side. This man she was so sure would break Carrie’s heart, who would disappear as the frost thawed. “All right.”
She agrees to what’s being asked of her. She listens to the mountains, the tolling bell growing steadily louder. It’s not Carrie’s time, nor is it Matthieu’s. Not yet. But she felt that pinch inher chest, felt it dragging down her arm, that muscle in her chest giving out.
It’s not their time.
But it is hers.
She hears them, the people searching for her Carrie, and runs with a fleetness she hasn’t had since her youth, guiding them, pressing back the branches to lure them farther down the path. When they find her, Carrie’s breath is a huff, a small sigh. Cora’s fingers press against her mouth as they lift her, as they move her. They carry them both, Carrie and this man, this Matthieu, calling out to one another as the sun dusts a lazy haze across the mountain.
Cora is left behind, left in the frost and the cold. She lowers her fingers from her mouth, breathes in the scent of spring. She closes her eyes, once more feeling the warmth at her side, of Howard on the hospital bed beside her. And she knows it was the mountains, the final slip of Morgan magic, that guided her to Carrie’s side. She smiles, nuzzling in closer to the man she loves, breathing in his scent.
Then she gives herself, all of herself, knowing her time is coming.
Chapter 48
Cora
Fifty-Nine Years Ago
